"The official duties of the Academy should be delegated to more Academy members. . . . Allen is on all the committees. It's important that the Academy gets a new secretary in due course," Ahnlund told the daily Expressen.

Two other members -- Kerstin Ekman and Lars Gyllensten -- stopped attending in 1989 when Allen refused to allow the committee to denounce Iran's death edict on British novelist Salman Rushdie, who has been in hiding for seven years because of it. Writer Werner Aspenstrom, 78, has stopped attending, saying he does not like groups or committees.

A rule dating from 1901, the year the first Nobel prize was awarded, requires that at least 12 of the 18-member Academy cast a vote for the award nominees, the daily Dagens Nyheter said on Thursday.

Johannes Edfelt, who turns 92 this year, told Dagens Nyheter he felt tired and had little to contribute to discussions on who should win the prize.

Swedish King Gustav III decided more than two centuries ago that Academy members would serve life terms. "A person can be thrown out or die, but can never resign," Allen told the daily.

"(King Gustav III) does not seem to have taken into account the possibility of controversy when members would like to leave the assembly alive," the newspaper said. No rule changes are anticipated, the newspaper said.

The Academy keeps the numbered chairs empty in case the dissident members change their minds.

The Academy, which announces the Nobel prize winner in October, is responsible for most major Swedish literary awards but is best known for the Nobel, named after Swedish inventor of dynamite Alfred Nobel, who set up several awards for good works on his death.